Friday, 4 July 2014

Is
this The Roxy? The Vortex? CBGB's? No, its that hotbed of raw pounding
Punk Rock, The Basinbourne Pavillion; the scene of this seminal
performance from Controls in 1979.

After Keine Namen came
The mighty Controls, which contained the more musicianly elements of
their predecessors. Of course,you are all aware of the Controls monolithic (with emphasis on the Mono bit) back catalogue on Stupid
Rabbit Tapes?.....if not click HERE to be enlightened.We
thought that was all, but no, from the vast archives of Tim Naylor,
head bass abuser of Controls, we have this live document from 1979. They
treat us to some cover versions, that are probably better than the
originals; in the case of Rebel Rebel at least. There’s even a rare
cover version of probably the greatest song of allllll time, “Public
Image”; who would even dare to attempt it? In the great DIY tradition,
it is deconstructed, and reconstituted as a one and half minutes of
barely controlled bass clawing, droning guitar, and drums that sound
like cardboard boxes. Then there’s the original numbers, like the
magnifique “I’ll be your Electric Chair”, which is sublime, rock’n’roll
in all its raw innocent glory. Apparently, they only played this live
once!? Some people say this is an incompetent racket, but they are
blind to honesty, deaf to charm, numb to youthful energy/passion, speak
dead words, and most importantly, have no access to the universal
energy field that only the truly open can channel. This happens in
moments like this, when a ‘crap punk’ (this is a new genre for you genre
junkies out there)band lets itself free from the mind forged manacles
of the accepted wisdom.If this sounds like some pretentious
prattling about something unimportant, then , in the words of the great
Don Van Vliet, “You’ve had too much to think”. Now go away and take a
long look in the mirror, and come back and listen with your third ear.
Feel the energy that turned the nuclear waste of exploded stars into US!
(Ok so i was bored! But it sounds vaguely philosophical
dunnit?)......yes this tape is a message from the Godhead.

Tim Naylor says this:

"Rampant Silliness at the Pavilion....recorded
over a few weekends in July and August 1979 - some tracks as three
piece some as four piece. This was the period we morphed from being
Bright Young Things to Controls and some of these tracks would have
been recorded as BYT, but not the track Bright Young Things ,
confusingly, because Jon's rhythm guitar is evident. He also sings
Rebel Rebel and plays on an early version of Invited Few.We did the
cover versions as a three piece (best described as enthusiastic
interpretations) because we thought it would help us get some gigs
because we were writing all our own material and no one wanted to know.
And surprisingly it did the trick... the Albert Street Social Club and
Prince of Wales gigs resulted. The 'Electric Chair' song also
appeared here for one time only - we never played it again and had
obviously been listening to a PIL a lot that week...There were about
twenty copies of this produced and handed out to venues like those
above, the local tech and schools and pubs. It follows the typical
Controls sound quality (bee in a tin etc)."